


all these poses made me a man (but who cares what that is)

by queenbaskerville



Series: three left turns [1]
Category: Chuck (TV), Magic Mike (Movies), White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: Backstory, Bryce Larkin is Alive, Clones, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Everyone Is Alive, Fake Science, Friendship, Gen, Handwave Science, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Neal Caffrey & Bryce Larkin are Clones, Past Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Psychic Abilities, References to Drugs, Science Fiction, Secret Past, Strippers & Strip Clubs, not as dark as it sounds though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:22:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbaskerville/pseuds/queenbaskerville
Summary: Ken plays up the hippie thing, but sometimes—when you grew up as somebody's fucked-up, weaponized science experiment, and you hadn't seen the moon outside of pictures until you were ten, and you hadn't seen the beach outside of pictures until you were free, and other people's moods and auras are real to you—sometimes you truly become a bit of a hippie, okay? It happens.
Relationships: Ken/Ken's Wife (Magic Mike), Mike & Ken (Magic Mike), Mike/Ken (Magic Mike), Mike/Rome (Magic Mike), Neal Caffrey & Bryce Larkin & Ken
Series: three left turns [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178960
Kudos: 7





	all these poses made me a man (but who cares what that is)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm writing a big clone fic about neal and bryce, and ken is the third one in their little trio, but he's not really doing much plot-wise, and his chapter kind of disrupted the flow of things, so i thought, okay, i'll make his backstory a prequel of sorts.
> 
> i actually watched both magic mike movies to write this, which, since i am a lesbian, you can imagine was not something i ever thought i'd do (verdict: the first movie is so boring it's almost unwatchable, but the second one is pretty fun).
> 
> fic title from ["poses" by rufus wainwright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRItL62qexg)
> 
> i tried to make it pretty obvious, but gabriel/brie is bryce larkin, and george is neal caffrey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from ["everybody here wants you" by jeff buckley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrMwgTc69y4)

In 2012, Mike leaves, and it hits Ken harder than he expects.

Wait. That's a terrible place to start. Let's take a step backward.

In 1996, Ken first meets Dallas for the first time. He's fifteen years old. His name isn't Ken yet.

Not that far back.

It's 2006. Ken has been working at Xquisite Strip Club for seven years. He's twenty-five, though he's pretending to be twenty-eight, for continuity's sake—he'd lied to Dallas about his age when they'd met, after all, and he kept the lie consistent when he'd come to him again three years later looking for work. Most of the men Ken will come to think of as his friends, his final crew, are not here yet—Tobias and Tito and Richie are still a year or two away. Dallas's new recruit is twenty-six, and he's tall, but most of the guys are taller than Ken—Tarzan is 6'10", for fuck's sake—and Ken's not intimidated by height, anyway. No, it's people's energies that warn him off, and the new recruit's energies seem just fine. 

"Everybody, this is Mike," Dallas says, arm slung around his shoulders, which is only possible because the cowboy boots he wears give him an extra two inches of height. "Mike, this is everybody. I plucked this gem right out of Georgia, and it's y'all's job to make sure he's up to speed, though he's got some moves already. I think we got ourselves some real star potential."

"Alright, brother," one of the guys, Nicky, says, reaching out to clasp arms with Mike. "Welcome to the Kings."

Kings of Tampa, that's them.

"Welcome, man," Ken says, offering an easy smile, and Mike returns it. He doesn't look as nervous as he feels, which is a good sign; he'll be a better stripper if he can hide what he's feeling.

Dallas takes charge of Mike's training at first, showing him what's what at the gym, and then passes him off to Joey once they get deeper into the choreography. It's not even an hour in, though, when Mike's pointed Ken's way.

"He's worked here the longest out of any of us," Joey says. "I think Tarzan's been stripping in general longer, though, if you wanna ask him instead."

(Tarzan has, in fact, been stripping the longest, and he's an amiable, quiet man, but he's also ex-military, and Ken doesn't trust him.) 

Ken doesn't let them know that he's listening, but he tries to radiate _I'm-friendly-and-approachable-let-me-help-you_ energy, and, sure enough, Mike walks over. 

"Hey, man," Ken says. "How's it going?"

"Good, man, good," Mike says, already relaxing in Ken's presence. "Look, this part of the choreo..."

"You've got this," Ken says. "It's easy, look, you just—" and he shows him, and Mike copies him easily, finally getting it—Joey, Ken thinks, is not a very good instructor; this guy Mike takes to dance like a fish to water, how could Joey possibly fuck that up—and Mike usually comes to Ken after that if he's got a question. He doesn't have too many questions, though. He's good. He's real good. He's got women eating out of the palm of his hand from the moment he steps on stage, even before he takes off enough of his clothes to pop his Xquisite runway cherry.

"You're new to Tampa, aren't you?" Ken says after the first night is over and they're all a little sweaty and counting their money. Joey hasn't made too much—he hasn't really found a new signature act since Steve Irwin just died and Joey's blonde crocodile hunter thing is still too insensitive to start performing again—and Joey's pissed about it, and Ken doesn't need that negative energy, so he's standing toward the back, near Mike. 

"Yeah," Mike says. "I was in Savannah before this."

"Well, you ever need somebody to show you around, you let me know," Ken says. "I know all the best farmer's markets in the city."

"Farmer's markets, huh?" Mike says, laughing a little incredulously. "What—what're you buying in farmer's markets, man?"

"I'm telling you, all-natural produce is the way to go," Ken says. "I'm serious! You think I keep these abs with that processed factory bullshit? No way, man."

"I think farmer's markets are a little out of my budget," Mike says. "I'll come to you first, though, I swear, hand to God."

"All that money you just made tonight, and you can't afford a couple of fresh apples?" Ken teases.

"All that money _you_ just made tonight, and you seriously want to spend it on apples?" Mike counters.

Ken holds up his hands in surrender. 

"You saving up for something big?"

"Nah, nothing special," Mike says.

In 2006, this is the truth; Mike hasn't lived on the coast long enough to fall in love with making furniture out of things he's scavenged from the beach. He's still a dreamer, though, and Ken can tell right away that Mike always has been. Mike's playing it off, but the truth is at the forefront of his mind: he is here, stripping, because working with his body is something he's good at and construction work doesn't pay enough on its own; he wants this money to mean something; he wants, desperately, to have something more. 

This is not unique to Mike. Most people in a job this demanding have at least the vague idea of doing something different. Ken, though, is happy where he is; he thinks if he could do this for the rest of his life, he'd be happy. There are things about this job that make him unhappy, obviously—the nights he doesn't make much money, the nights their audience gets too handsy, the nights one of them fucks up and Dallas spends half an hour berating them backstage—but Ken has a beautiful life. He gets to dance and make money and go to house parties and sandbar parties and even hurricane parties now and then. And he can afford an apartment all to himself and all the fresh fruit he wants. And everybody loves him. Ken steps out on that stage and everybody in the room is having a good time. The air thrums with it, all that happiness. Ken wants to ride that high as far as it'll take him.

"You're gonna get everything you want, man," Ken says.

"Shut up," Mike says, but he's messing around when he says it, still smiling. "You don't know what the hell I want."

Mike's smile dims for a second. A memory floats to the front of his mind—he said that in a fight with someone, the woman he loves, or loved, back in Savannah, their fight about him leaving for Florida and better money. He pushes the memory away, but not before Ken, who's paying very close attention, can catch her name, Rome, and a glimpse of her, brown-eyed and broken-hearted and beautiful.

"I know exactly what you want," Ken says.

"Oh, yeah?" Mike says, playing along, trying to pull himself out of that funk. "What's that?"

"You want to go to the farmer's market with me," Ken says. "Come on, man, I can tell. I'm a mind reader."

This is true. Mike doesn't know that, though, and neither does anybody else. He thinks Ken is joking, and he also thinks that Ken is asking him out on a date. He is, unfortunately for Ken, not interested, but he's not reacting with disgust, which scores him points in Ken's book. Ken changes tactics accordingly.

"Lots of beautiful women at farmer's markets," Ken says. 

"I'll think about it," Mike says, still thinking about that woman he left behind. It's too soon for him to move on. Mike wants to pretend that it's not, but he can't, not yet.

Ken pretends to be a lot of things. Ken, for one. That wasn't his name before (though it's been so long now that the name Ken feels less like a pretense and more of a second skin). Ken pretends to be three years older than his real age. Ken pretends to be a little dumber than he really is. Ken pretends to be straight, because he's skimmed the others' thoughts enough to know that they all are. He doesn't have to say much about his life—none of them do, it's not the kind of job where they're going to pin pictures of family members to their lockers—but, in the few moments when people are paying attention, he pretends, most importantly, to be a normal person. He pretends like he's just like everybody else, and not somebody for whom his first fourteen years of life, his version of normal, would be anybody else's sci-fi nightmare. 

The mind-reader thing is part of it. A big part. Arguably the biggest, at this point. He doesn't like to think of it as mind-reading, though, and calling it psychic powers seems a little dramatic. No, when Ken thinks of it, he thinks of it in terms of energy. The world is saturated with energy, and Ken is part of that, a fish in a stream, only he's got a better read on things than most fish. Everywhere he goes, he's sensing the energies around him, all the happiness and sadness and frustration and boredom and apathy and curiosity and anger. Desires, too, he can usually pick out, cravings, and lusts, and their opposites: repulsion, rejection, dismay, whenever it's a strong feeling of do not want. Feelings and desires radiate from people, and he always, always picks up on it. He can't not. Well, he can tune it out—even try to shut down, a little, close himself up, wall himself off from the rest of the world—but it's like holding his breath, and he doesn't usually see the need. It's better, he thinks, to know how other people are feeling. He puts out good energy because he wants good energy back, and whenever he senses bad or negative energy, he avoids it or redirects it. He's like a small wave coming up on the shore: _relax, calm down, chin up_. He's gentle. He's always gentle. A man came at him once in an alley on his way to work, knife in hand, ready to take more than just Ken's money, and Ken hadn't so much as frowned at him. "You don't want to be here, man," Ken said, and he'd sent out a gentle wave, and when the man soaked in that wave, he hadn't wanted to be there anymore, and he'd left.

The first time Ken had been in a city had been overwhelming. He'd been ten years old, curled up in a suitcase, and it was his first mission, and he didn't move, didn't give sign at all that he was upset, but if he hadn't been so well-trained, he would've been hyperventilating. So many thoughts. So, so many. So many thoughts and feelings and people, and it was all so _loud_ , and how was he ever going to filter it all? But he'd done what he was supposed to, submerged himself in the mind he was supposed to, came up from the dive with the information he was supposed to.

He's not a frightened kid anymore, doing what he was made for. No, now he's twenty-six, and he does whatever he wants. He burns incense in his apartment and he meditates on the beach and he dances at night for a crowd of people who love him and he only takes orders from Dallas. If Ken had it his way, he'd never take orders from anybody ever again, but when the orders are just dance choreography, it's alright. The kill orders on missions are what he loathed the most.

He can feel it when a person dies. And when he's the one to kill them, the one digging into their head and causing that horrible, final pain—well. There's a reason Ken doesn't do that anymore.

Being a stripper is much better. Ken has a beautiful life. He doesn't take it for granted. Not ever.

* * *

Ken plays up the hippie thing a little bit, but the best lies come from truth, and he really does love it, feeling connected with everything. He talks about karma, but the western idea of karma is bastardized, and what he really means is a _what-goes-around-comes-around_ sort of notion only in the sense that he believes in putting out the energy he wants to receive. He's not naive enough to believe in western karma, or justice, or even that people get what they deserve. He tries to earn every good thing he has, though. He wants to be a friendly face. He never wants to hurt anybody ever again. He wants to treat the world right. So, yeah, he doesn't litter. He volunteers for beach cleanup. He conserves water. He buys and burns incense, he does yoga, he meditates. He believes in omens and signs. And he's a little superstitious, he has his rituals. Sometimes when you grew up as somebody's fucked-up, weaponized science experiment, and you hadn't seen the moon outside of pictures until you were ten, and you hadn't seen the beach outside of pictures until you were free, and other people's moods and auras are real to you—sometimes you truly become a bit of a hippie, okay? It happens.

He takes good care of his body. There's the aforementioned yoga and farmer's market food. He palms most of the drugs they pass around at Xquisite and fakes the high; he does, occasionally, smoke weed, but he has so many headaches, he gives himself a pass. He stretches, he works out. He knows that he's pretty. He's always known—the scientists and the guards had, for the most part, behaved professionally, but they couldn't hide their thoughts from him—and he uses that prettiness now to make his living. Other people's opinions, predatory or affectionate, don't affect him too much—how can they, when his face isn't his own, when he knows exactly how unique he isn't—but he knows how to use them.

His body isn't who he is. None of the clones had felt that way. What made them different from each other was something else—and it couldn't be their brains, could it, since they had all grown them from the same source—no, Ken thinks it has something to do with a soul. He's not sure if he's got one—he's not exactly a home-grown, genuine, real person, after all—but there is something about him, the shade or shadow of a soul, maybe, or some sort of essence, something beyond a body, something underneath, something that is at the core of who he is. He is more than this vessel, and he believes in transcendence, and he thinks that when he dies, he will be released from his body, and he will return to the universe. He's well-acquainted with death, knows exactly how it feels when someone else's inner light goes out, and he doesn't know where that energy goes, but he's read up on his science, he knows that it's all cyclical, it doesn't just disappear. There's something to him that's more than a body, and he nourishes it as best he can, cultivates his energy, believes fully that his connection with this world will not end even when his life does.

It might be a good idea to address the clone thing really quickly. If the mind-reader thing is one of half of his aforementioned sci-fi nightmare, the clone thing is the other half. 

He was born in 1981 as G71293. When he'd survived infancy—two of G Group had not—he'd gotten the name Gray (though he was still expected to answer to G71293). G74152 and G78247 had also lived, and they'd become George and Gabriel.

There were others, Group C through Group J—since the first of them all, Andy, and the second, Ben, the sole survivor of B Group, had both died before Gray's time—but let's focus on George and Gabriel for now. They were a part of Gray—they still are—in a way that the other clones had not been. They could all connect with each other's minds easily, but only clones from their own group are ever-present, permanently linked. There's enough room in Ken's head that it feels a little empty without the two who did not survive infancy, whoever they would have become, but George and Gabriel are there, their energies pulsing steadily even when all three of them are asleep. Gabriel—Brie, he had always preferred Brie—is walled off from Ken in a way that George isn't, but Ken can still feel Brie there, permanently tinged with loneliness and something a little darker.

It has been that way since 2002. Brie had radiated happiness for a while, floated occasional hazy sensations to Ken and George—the quiet of a college library, the saltwater breeze of a beach, the plastic of a video game controller warming up in his hands—but in 2002 there'd been a spike of fear and despair so strong that Ken had staggered in the grocery store. Ken had sent a wave of inquiry and felt George's, too. Brie sent back a clear message, every word tinged red with warning: _The CIA found me_. Brie's walls had slammed down around himself so quickly that Ken hadn't had time to say anything back. 

Ken had gone home from the grocery store without buying anything, holed himself up in his apartment for several days, and had almost quit his job, too afraid to leave his bedroom. But he'd gone to work, and he'd kept an eye out, and nothing had changed for him. Nobody came for him. No CIA agents, no agents from anywhere else. Ken called his agent—his acting agent—the next morning and thanked him for his hard work and told him he was done with the whole thing. Even the idea of it had been a mistake. The Tide commercial in 1998 had been even dumber, but in Ken's defense, he'd been seventeen and terrified that he might get sick and die like so many of the other clones he'd known, which had made him more reckless, more careless; why not try something new and fun if he was going to be dead within the year?

Huge mistake. The CIA hadn't tracked him down during that commercial's (rather impressive and long-running) airtime, but Ken was never doing anything like that again. 

Brie keeps himself walled off from Ken and George to keep them safe, and to protect them from the residual feelings of whatever the CIA is doing to him, or is making him do, but he still feels like a knot of pain in the back of Ken's head. There'd been a specific day in 2003 when there'd been another wave of pain, some sort of preemptive grief and the beginning of his permanent loneliness, but he hadn't answered any of Ken and George's tentative queries about it; the walls stayed up.

Last year, 2005, had been George's turn to worry Ken—Ken was in the middle of practicing his choreography at the gym, pantomiming a cowboy shootout with Joey, when he'd felt the cold of handcuffs clicking tightly around his wrists, and he'd stilled at the sensation, faltered in his steps. 

"What the hell was that?" Dallas said. "Ken, what the hell?"

"Sorry, Dallas," Ken said automatically, but he was trying to communicate with George: _What happened?_

_Arrested,_ George sent back. _FBI. Worth the risk. Not sure what will happen now._

What could possibly have been worth the risk? What in the absolute fuck could've been worth it? Ken wanted to go home. He wanted to go home, lock all the doors, close all the blinds, turn off all the lights, and hide somewhere. In his closet, maybe. In the bathroom. Under the bed.

"I need a water break," Ken said, and Dallas had started to protest, but Ken didn't have time for that, and he nudged Dallas's mind: _You don't want to work us to death._

"Fine, fine, take a water break; I don't want to work y'all to death," Dallas says, though he still tosses up his hands with frustration. "Get your head on straight, Ken!"

George didn't wall himself off the way Brie had, but it had been a tense couple of days. Dallas had hired Tarzan shortly after, and Ken had been—maybe unfairly—suspicious of him, worried that this was his reckoning, this was the CIA plant come to kill him. He tore through Tarzan's thoughts, dove beyond the surface-level, inspected layer by layer for any government ties. He'd found Tarzan's memories of military service, training and war and violence, Desert Storm, all of it, and Ken had forced himself to watch the memories, just in case—but, no, Tarzan wasn't CIA. He was no spy, no assassin. He was just ex-military. Ken avoided him—still avoids him—nonetheless.

Ken is pretty sure, a year later, that George is still in prison; George keeps to himself, but there's been no stomach-plunging terror that says the CIA has come for him, but no overwhelming joy that says he's finally out. Just sort of resigned misery, low and steady.

It's more important than ever for Ken to concentrate on energies. Ken does his damnedest to be happy: more time at the beach, more time at Xquisite drawing the crowd's excitement and delight into him, more time doing things he loves, like cooking and reading and smiling at people who smile back for him. Ken curates handfuls of little moments and pushes them toward Brie and George, offers them like gifts, like throwing everything at a wall and hoping something sticks, hoping something makes their horrible days just a little brighter. Here's the scent of a woman's perfume clouding his nose, here's the saltwater cold and beautiful around his ankles, here's the warmth of the sun on his face, here's the sweetness of strawberries on his tongue, here's the music of the nightclub in his ears, the bass thundering in his chest. It is all Ken can give them. It is the only thing he can think to do.

It's 2006, and Brie is silent, and George is quiet, and Ken is the only one of the three of them left who's free.


End file.
